


Hindsight is 0/0

by eve11



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Blind Twelfth Doctor, Episode Fix-it, Episode: s10e07 The Pyramid at the End of the World, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-26
Updated: 2018-01-26
Packaged: 2019-03-09 12:47:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 912
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13481790
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eve11/pseuds/eve11
Summary: A blurb I wrote after the Monks trilogy, for an avenue I thought might be more interesting.  May turn into a series here and there--but I am also trying to get back in to writing to finish my other WIP that has been languishing for a few years, so this one may just stand alone for a while.  Also I loved Erica to bits and it would be great to see more of her.





	Hindsight is 0/0

“You are the stupidest idiot ever!” Bill’s voice cried in his ear. _See_ , the Doctor told himself. That waver, that emotion behind her words, that was exactly what he’d feared. That was why he was right not to tell her anything about—“Snap a picture!” she interrupted him right in the middle of his fatalism.

“I’m so sorry—wait, what?” He blinked behind his glasses. The telepathically generated landscape in front of him didn’t change. 

“Snap a picture of the lock! Can you do that?” 

_Forty-five seconds,_ his internal countdown informed him. “Bill, I can’t see photographs either—”

“Idiot! Message it to me and I’ll tell you the how the numbers are set! You can do the rest, yeah? Hurry!”

As hugely intelligent as he was, the Doctor didn’t need to be told twice. He sonicked his phone to take a voice command for photos, held the phone in front of the lock as steady as he could, and boosted the signal to send the resulting digital image. He got the numbers back from Bill with six seconds to spare. 

“Nine-two-three-four, with a zero above the nine!” she told him. That was all the information he needed. And fate was in their corner; the last digit was even correct.

 _Three seconds._ Nine clicked up four places to three. 

_Two seconds._ Two clicked up four places to six.

 _One._ Three clicked down two places to one. The door buzzed and he heaved it open and bolted through, then swung around, grabbed the handle and threw himself backward as fast as he—

_Zero._

 

**

 

_Tung, tung, tung._

“Doctor?! Doctor! What happened?” Bill’s voice was tinny, hard to hear over the ringing in his ears. It was coming from somewhere off to his left. ”Did you make it out? Please, talk to me!” 

_Tung, tung, tung._

Everything was hazy gray, and he was on the floor. His face and hands stung like he’d gotten a bad sunburn, and the airlock smelled like disinfectant mixed with propellant and the hint of burnt plastic. The Doctor groaned and swiped a hand across his brow. That explained the haze; his sunglasses were missing. 

_Tung, tung, tung, tung, tung._ The sound slotted into place: a fist rapping on glass. It had to be Erica at the other side of the airlock in the machine room. 

He tried to speak and was wracked by a cough as his respiratory bypass kicked him back to breathing. Instead, he got to his knees and gave a thumbs up in the direction of the tapping. It stopped and Erica’s muffled voice came through. He’d gotten the lab door mostly shut but the bit of the blast that had sent him flying must have knocked out the intercom. Erica said something about emergency protocol and he worked out that they needed to establish negative pressure again in the airlock. He waved a hand in acknowledgement before questing out to retrieve his mobile phone.

Bill was frantic on the other end. “Doctor, the pyramid’s gone! Are you okay? Did you make it? Say something, please!”

“Piece of cake,” he answered her. He found the wall behind him and sat back heavily. “I could do it with my eyes closed.”

“Oh, God,” Bill said, the relief palpable in her voice. “You really are going to be unbearable.”

His sunglasses, when he finally found them, were fried. He thought about putting them on anyway, but folded them up instead and put them in his coat pocket. He was through hiding. Nardole was right, the Doctor supposed. He had always been good at running, but his omissions had nearly cost them the planet this time. He scrubbed a hand over his face, eyes closed and then blinking open to the dim, featureless gray. It wasn’t going to go away.

Erica finally opened the door to the machine room and he tried to look sternly at her.

“We need to have a talk about your lab’s accessibility standards,” he said. 

She just laughed. “Tell me about it.” Surprised, he looked down toward the source of the sound, and he supposed he hadn’t realized before how short she was for a fully grown human. She touched his hand and then placed it on her shoulder. “Come on, your police box is through here. Short steps, match mine. Were those glasses helping you earlier?” 

“Basic shapes, enough to keep me from crashing into things,” he answered, concentrating on mapping the room out as much as he could via sound, air currents, and temporal potentials. “Though you seem to be a good substitute.” 

“Had a blind friend at University; we met in the disability services office. I couldn’t give him my elbow so we worked something else out. What about your friend, on the phone?” 

“Student of mine.” He rapped the air where the potentials told him the TARDIS would be, and was rewarded with her solid bulk. “She travels with me. And Nardole, long as I can get his lungs working again.”

“All three of you? In there?” 

Erica’s skepticism was plain in her stance and tone, and so help him, he still loved this bit, even if this go round he would have to imagine the look on her face when she came through. The Doctor smiled and snapped his fingers. His old girl still knew what to do. The door creaked open in front of him.

“You know what they say,” he said, ushering Erica inside. “Looks can be deceiving.”


End file.
